03/14/2014

Each year, the 14th of March is celebrated by scientifically-minded folks for two good reasons. First, it’s Einstein’s birthday (happy 135th, Albert!). Second, it’s Pi Day, because 3/14 is the closest calendrical approximation we have to the decimal expansion of pi, π =3.1415927….

Both of these features — Einstein and pi — are loosely related by playing important roles in science and mathematics. But is there any closer connection?

Of course there is. We need look no further than Einstein’s equation. I mean Einstein’sreal equation — not E=mc2, which is perfectly fine as far as it goes, but a pretty straightforward consequence of special relativity rather than a world-foundational relationship in it’s own right. Einstein’s real equation is what you would find if you looked up “Einstein’s equation” in the index of any good GR textbook: the field equation relating the curvature of spacetime to energy sources, which serves as the bedrock principle of general relativity. It looks like this:

It can look intimidating if the notation is unfamiliar, but conceptually it’s quite simple; if you don’t know all the symbols, think of it as a little poem in a foreign language. In words it is saying this:

(gravity) = 8 π G × (energy and momentum).

Not so scary, is it? The amount of gravity is proportional to the amount of energy and momentum, with the constant of proportionality given by 8πG, where G is a numerical constant.

Hey, what is π doing there? It seems a bit gratuitous, actually. Einstein could easily have defined a new constant H simply be setting H=8πG. Then he wouldn’t have needed that superfluous 8π cluttering up his equation. Did he just have a special love for π, perhaps based on his birthday?

The real story is less whimsical, but more interesting. Einstein didn’t feel like inventing a new constant because G was already in existence: it’s Newton’s constant of gravitation, which makes perfect sense. General relativity (GR) is the theory that replaces Newton’s version of gravitation, but at the end of the day it’s still gravity, and it has the same strength that it always did.

So the real question is, why does π make an appearance when we make the transition from Newtonian gravity to general relativity?

I once had an econometrics professor who noted that the repetition of mathematical constants like pi and euler's number across different disciplines was the best argument for the world being created by intelligent design. Just as pi has a place in Einstein's equation, so too it has a place in the normal probability density function:

Is it more impressive to find a fully operational watch in a field or pi in equations describing seemingly unrelated phenomena?